United States
North America
Access to legal rights
Justice
Violence
United States
State Sen. Julia C. Salazar has proposed a series of bills that seek to make it easier to discipline or fire correction officers who are found to have engaged in misconduct, including using excessive force, as well as to provide greater independent oversight of state prisons.
North America
Justice
Death penalty
Violence
United States
Attorneys for an Alabama incarcerated person scheduled to be the fourth person put to death with nitrogen gas asked a federal judge to block the execution, arguing that the first three incarcerated people showed signs of suffering from suffocation as the gas flowed.
Crises
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Violence
Alternatives
United States
Prisons, jails and detention centers are placed in locations where environmental hazards such as toxic landfills, floods and extreme heat are the norm.
North America
Drugs
Social ties
United States
The Texas Department of Criminal Justice (TDCJ), contracts with a private company to scan and digitize incoming mail. The TDCJ promotes the false narrative that contraband drugs primarily enter prisons by mail.In reality, these mail bans are ineffective at reducing the supply of contraband. What th…
North America
Social ties
United States
This fall students in one of UW-La Crosse Professor Nicholas Bakken’s sociology classes visited New Lisbon Correctional Institution (NLCI) twice to help incarcerated people record themselves reading storybooks that were then gifted to their child or children at home.
North America
Justice
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
United States
Moldy mattresses, 24/7 lights and constant noise contribute to a persistent health and safety crisis in prisons and jails. The Marshall Project and Los Angeles Times have identified more than 30 lawsuits regarding sleep deprivation behind bars over the last three decades.
North America
Women
LGBTQI
Health
Mental health
United States
With new restrictions on gender-affirming care, prisons confiscate underwear from trans people and compel them to cut their hair.
United States: juvenile detention centers in North Carolina under scrutiny for use of isolation
News
North America
Minors
Health
Mental health
Material conditions
Suicide
Social ties
United States
Teenagers in North Carolina’s juvenile justice system are routinely being locked alone in their rooms for as much as 23 to 24 hours a day, according to an ongoing federal lawsuit and advocates for young people in custody.
Culture
North America
Material conditions
Facilities
Social ties
United States
Danish architecture studio Schmidt Hammer Lassen and American studio DLR Group have been selected to redesign California’s San Quentin State Prison into a rehabilitation centre that will utilise influences from the Scandinavian incarceration system.
Crises
North America
Facilities
United States
Manatee county jail, which has 1,200 incarcerated people and is located on the south-east side of Tampa Bay, in the path of the hurricane that was roaring towards it across the Gulf of Mexico on Wednesday, will not be evacuating, a representative of the jail told Newsweek on Tuesday.
Crises
North America
Health
Mental health
Overcrowding
United States
Another person has died in Los Angeles County jails, marking the 24th in-custody death so far this year and the 69th since the start of 2023.
North America
Health
Material conditions
Overcrowding
Violence
United States
This latest death follows one earlier this week at the same facility, Los Angeles’s Men’s Central Jail. The proximity of these tragedies underscores the urgency for Los Angeles County to honor the commitment it made in 2021 to close the facility and stop the cycle of death plaguing its jails.
North America
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
United States
Legal action aims to force criminal justice department to air condition prisons, where 85,000 are at risk of heat illnesses.
North America
Women
Justice
Activities
Rehabilitation
United States
Across the country, people incarcerated in women’s prisons have less access to higher education opportunities compared to men’s prisons. That’s according to research from the Vera Institute of Justice, a nonprofit that tracks educational opportunities for incarcerated people.
North America
Women
Health
Material conditions
United States
A woman in the Central California Women’s Facility, located in the Central valley city of Chowchilla, died as temperatures in the region climbed above 110F. The California Coalition for Women Prisoners, an advocacy group, said it appeared the woman suffered a preventable heat death.
North America
Access to legal rights
Justice
United States
The Colorado Department of Corrections refuses to provide sex offender treatment to people serving indeterminate prison sentences despite assuring them that once they go through the program they will be eligible for parole, a new federal lawsuit alleges.
North America
Health
Rehabilitation
United States
Adults and youth often find delays in getting access to Medicaid, so the department announced that incarcerated people transitioning out of imprisonment will receive coverage before their release. The coverage applies to Illinois, Kentucky, Oregon, Utah and Vermont.
Crises
North America
Health
Material conditions
Facilities
United States
Over the past two decades, nearly 13,000 people have perished behind bars during America’s summer months. However, many of these deaths are not typically attributed to heat, the product of poor death-counting practices that have led to an undercount of heat-related deaths for decades.
North America
Europe
Oceania
Justice
United States
US plea deal allows WikiLeaks founder to return to Australia after an extraordinary legal fight spanning more than a decade.